All through the month
of August we'll be blogging a few choice nuggets from The Mothership – that's
www.walks.com, the main website of London Walks. Our From The Archive series is
written in the main by London Walks' Pen David
Tucker and will feature practical tips on joining in with a London
Walk, some general London info as well as some more "off the beaten
track" bits…
London Walkers –
You're the Best!
Angela rang up earlier
this summer. Fizzing with excitement.
"I never want to
stop doing this. I love this job. The people you meet on these walking tours –
it's beyond price."
In this instance it
was a family from Texas. Goat farmers. (Who'd a thought it?) They were on their
way to Cannes. To the Film Festival. Someone had made a film about them. And
why not? Lovely family. Counter culture types. Mum, dad, two teenage girls and
their goats. The daughters – the teenagers – were home schooled. So they could
help with the huge job of keeping the goats farmed. Turns out the girls did
most of the milking. The mom and dad had wired the barn for sound – fitted it
out with speakers. Two birds with one stone. Girls could have something to
listen to while they were milking the goats. Not Justin Bieber or something
even more mindless (or insipid). The father hit on the idea of
"barn"-casting articles from The Economist. He'd be at the mike in the
broadcast booth reading the articles – the girls and the goats would be on the
receiving end. Didn't work especially well. "Everything slowed right
down." Daughters and goats got completely absorbed in what they were
hearing – what The Economist was uttering took precedence over the uddering –
and the business to hand went, dare I say it, tits up. Mozart and Prokofiev
yes, The Economist no.
But it's easy to
understand Angela's excitement – and be completely attuned to the stand she's
taken. "The people you meet on these walking tours – who'd want to forego
that?"
Anyway, that's the
overture for this page.
The overture because
Angela's moment of buzz chimed with something we're fairly often asked these
days: "Who goes on your walks? What are the people like who go on London
Walks?"
Now the cookie cutter
answer has always been: "bright, fun, really nice, switched on
independents – people who are anything but 'spam in a can', bog standard, yucky
tourists; and – and this will almost certainly catch you off guard – a huge
number of them are Brits, and a lot of those Brits are Londoners."
That's the cookie
cutter answer. But we've decided to go one better. Decided to take the
occasional "snap shot" of a London Walk – a snap shot of who goes
there! Take, more or less at random from time to time, a London Walk or two and
find out: Who were the people on that walk? Where were they from? What do they
do? Should be fun. And, indeed, of some interest. Do, for example, we get more
lawyers on our Inns of Court walk? Is the demographic significantly younger on
Pepe's Street Art walk? And so on.
Here's a snapshot.
Walking Hampstead with
me (David) on Sunday morning, August 18, 2013, were:
Anna, a student from
Poland.
Pat, a retiree from
Luton.
Andy, a professor from
Toronto.
Dorothy, a librarian
from Toronto.
Paul, a retiree from
Belsize Park (just down the hill from Hampstead).
Dalia, a journalist
from Belsize Park.
Phil, an urban planner
from Bath.
Akiko, a translator
from Japan.
B.E., a student from
Vienna.
Rasami, "in
government service" from India.
Tzipi, a forensic
anthropologist from Israel.
Michelle, an
embroiderer from Australia (but now lives in London).
Barbara, a retiree
from Eugene, Oregon.
I.M., a civil servant
from London.
Elfriede, a civil
servant from Vienna.
Anything else? Yes,
sure. Four of them were on their 1st London Walk. For three of them the
Hampstead walk was their 2nd London Walk. One of the group was on his 3rd
London Walk. Two were on their 7th. One was on her 8th. One was on her 10th And
one on his 20th. Pretty good customer loyalty, wouldn't you say.
A
London Walk costs £9 – £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your
guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all
London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.